Every year I reflect on the LA Uprisings because they changed my life as a kid growing up in Korea.
It wasn’t one single event. It was a history of events, including cops being acquitted after brutally beating Rodney King, reflecting the racism of the police, and also the “justice system.” It was also shop owner Du SoonJa’s murder of Latasha Harlins, reflecting racism in economics and anti-Blackness, particularly within the Korean community. All of those events also reflected the larger system of white dominance, and how no matter what, everything serves white dominance.
Witnessing the brutal anti-Blackness within my own people before and during the LA uprisings are part of the reason I do the work I do today.
There is a poison for anti-Blackness within our Korean community. It is deeply embedded in not only the model minority myth, imperialism but also the white supremacy myth. It is embedded in classism and ableism.
These are also the very same reasons we experience anti-Asian racism as Koreans. Systematic oppression causes destruction from within and without.
Those systems of oppression existed then and now.
We have to remember our history as Koreans, as ugly, painful, and harmful as it is, so that we can learn from it. So we can remember what can happen when we forget it. So we can continue dismantling the destruction that happens inside and out.
이거, 우리 같이하자.
Comments are closed.